​8 years ago - 22-year-old Lorraine graduates & goes to law school while also pursuing a masters in business management.

​7 years ago - 23-year-old Lorraine is taken as a subject by Tokamek to convince her father to sign the Hewitt bill. He tries to use her exposure to the matrix as a conduit to recreate the Firestorm accident. She becomes infused with it's energy before wielding it to free herself, becoming Firehawk.

​6 years ago - 24-year-old Lorraine gets her masters degree & begins a sociology program. She uses her powers to assist the Justice League, where he meets Booster Gold and starts an on-and-off relationship with him.

​4 years ago - 26-year-old Lorraine finishes law school. Her father retires from the Senate.

3 years ago - 27-year-old Lorraine finishes her sociology program, begins working for her father's party. She discovers the Freedom Fighters & agrees to join.

Lorraine Reilly is probably a more interesting character than Firehawk. Firehawk is a supporting character for Firestorm. That's really it. She was his girlfriend who was kidnapped by one of his villains, and now she has her own costume and a version of his powers. There's really not THAT much more to say about her.

Meanwhile Lorraine Reilly is the daughter of US senator, and ultimately becomes a senator herself. A senator with superpowers. That is such a fantastically cool notion, and there really aren't any other characters like her. We've really latched onto this idea as the crux of her character, because it makes her into something absolutely unique.

First, we removed the idea that she was ever Ronnie's girlfriend. Lorraine is bright and very savvy with people, and she'd be a fantastic ally to Ronnie and Professor Stein in their early career as Firestorm. Even when she gets her powers, she's still more focused on her life as a law student. Obviously, she USES her powers. It would be irresponsible of her not to. To that end, she becomes Firehawk and a Justice League ally, where she meets her on-and-off boyfriend, Booster Gold. But still, the focus is on her studies. We often use a character's college experience to define them in our timelines, but with Lorraine and her future as a senator, we really wanted to give her a ton of appropriate background. She's a law school graduate with bachelors degrees in political science and sociology, and a masters in business management, as well as several years experience working with her political party. We really wanted to make the idea of her being a senator seem like a good thing. The idea that she uses her political ties to join the Freedom Fighters should speak volumes to her character.

We don't need to dwell on the topic of her costume, because it's not a defining part of her character. Still, while she's worn the same off-center hawk design for most of her career, there have been some REALLY great redesigns to her look over the years, with varying degrees of permanence. By far, our absolute favorite is the Jamal Igle design from Firestorm Vol. 3. It's sleek and streamlined with a classic design sense, actually evoking Jean Grey's Phoenix costume. It looses her wings in favor of wings of pure fire, but other than that the overall design is just amazing.